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Biography of Senator S.I. Hayakawa |
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Samuel Ichiye Hayakawa was born in Vancouver, Canada on July 18, 1906 of Japanese immigrant parents. He received his B.A. in English from the University of Manitoba in 1927, his M.A. in English from McGill University in Montreal in 1928, and his Ph.D. in English and American Literature from the University of Wisconsin in 1935. Dr. Hayakawa served as an instructor of English at the University of Wisconsin from 1936 to 1939. He then went on to teach at the Illinois Institute of Technology as an Associate Professor from 1939 to 1947. Dr. Hayakawa worked as a lecturer at the San Francisco State College from 1950 until he was made a professor of English in 1955. It was at this same time (1955) that Dr. Hayakawa became a naturalized citizen of the United States. In 1968 he was named President of the College and in 1973 President Emeritus of the then renamed San Francisco State University. In 1976 Dr. Hayakawa was elected to the U.S. Senate from California as a Republican. He was the first to introduce the English Language Amendment. Upon leaving the U.S. Senate in 1983, he helped found U.S.ENGLISH to promote a common official language, and was honorary Chairman until the time of his death. From 1983 to 1990 he also served as Special Advisor to the Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. Throughout Senator Hayakawa's long career he was best known as a semanticist, studying the history of language patterns and habits of thought. He wrote several internationally acclaimed books on semantics, including Language in Thought and Action, now in its fifth edition. Senator Hayakawa passed away in 1992 at the age of 85. | ||||||||
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